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1. 1 2017-05-01T18:30:00-04:00 media/F-1-1.JPG Ordinary People 35 image_header 2020-06-30T16:28:04-04:00 Despite the centuries of antisemitism in Europe before the Nazi rise to power, many German Jews considered themselves Germans first... Jews second. Patriotism was particularly important, especially to those Jews who had fought proudly for the Kaiser in the First World War.
   
   Jews prospered for generations as professionals and workers of every sort, from physicians and opticians, to peddlers, and they lived lives very much like those of their non-Jewish neighbors. More importantly, they did so in harmony, even while anti-Jewish sentiment remained just below the surface in Germany and throughout Europe.
   
   While Jews were not generally associated with large banking concerns or industrial companies, there were exceptions.  AEG (Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft) was founded by Emil Rathenau and his son, and became one of the largest manufacturers of electrical equipment in Europe; working closely with Thomas Edison on electrical equipment and introducing the telephone to Berlin in the late 19th century.
   
   
   
   
   Listen to a fragment of Helen Fagin's testimony about her family and the Jewish community in Radomsko, Poland:
   
   
   
   In this clip, Helen Fagin talks about her education in Radomsko, Poland: 
   
   
   
   
   Listen to a fragment of Walter Loebenberg's testimony about his family and religious life in Waechtersbach, Germany:
   
    
    
2. 1 2017-05-03T14:08:21-04:00 Changing Times 8 plain 2020-06-30T16:31:56-04:00 However, the newly-elected Nazi Party quickly discovered that the German people did not share in their zeal in hating Jews and other minorities.  German authorities who called for a boycott of Jewish businesses on April 1st, 1933 discovered that few heeded signs proclaiming the Jews as national enemies, instructing German shoppers to avoid Jewish-owned and operated shops and businesses.  Lasting only a day, seeing little to no impact in the shopping patterns of the German consumer, the boycott is called off.
   
   Hopes that the Nazis would be deterred from further attempts to publicly marginalize the Jews were dashed quickly as on April 7th, the German government enacted the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, which essentially purged Jews (and anyone else who could not prove their "Aryan" lineage) from the civil services.  The ethnic Jewish community before WWII in Germany numbered around five hundred thousand, but were disproportionately represented in liberal professions such as law, the civil service, teaching, and other professions reserved for middle class intellectuals.  Their purging from the civil service (including positions such as being a judge, or a teacher or work for the government) left spaces open for loyal Nazi-aligned officials to take their place, as well as beginning the process of ostracization from the rest of the German public.
   
   A total of roughly nine million Jews lived in the nations that the Nazis would later occupy during the course of the Second World War when Adolf Hitler came to power.  Mostly residing in newly independent Poland, Jews often faced discrimination everywhere and Jewish owned shops had been targeted by the government and private individuals in the deeply Catholic nation.  Antisemitism is a long running ideology of hate that was present in many countries in the inter-war period, especially in Europe, where Jews faced official, state sanctioned or social discrimination in some way throughout Eastern and Western Europe.
   
   
   Listen to a fragment of Walter Loebenberg's testimony about antisemitic attacks in Waechtersbach and moving to Frankfurt, Germany: